Sometimes My Heart

Sometimes my heart
Catches in my throat
And everything I am
Struggling to not remember
Hurtles through like a
Tsunami of memories
And love.

Sometimes my heart
Goes into a corner
And cries alone
It picks up its broken
Pieces from the floor
Clutching at its memories
And love.

The Analog to Digital Converter

When I left university back in the early 1980s, my first job was as Materials Manager in the Computer Department of Siemens London. I know! We Cupcakes are full of surprises.

Actually Siemens London was nowhere near London but in Sunbury in Middlesex. Also I had never been technical in my entire life and had studied mainly politics and history at university, but I had also studied German and apparently that qualified me for a job in this multinational German technology company.

One thing that I didn't mention at the interview but which probably really did qualify me for the job was that all through my childhood, I had spent most evenings sitting with my Dad in the workshop he had made in our garage. We didn't have a car, so my Dad, who was a hobby carpenter among other things, filled our garage with wood, formica (formica is the material of the future, my Dad said) and a workbench that he himself had constructed from pinewood with various interesting technical gadgets attached. He went to carpentry evening classes once a week and learned how to make all kinds of furniture, with which he proceeded to fill our house.

Now my Dad was a bit of a dreamer, not so much of an organizer or a manager type. So mostly he spent his spare time designing furniture with his propelling pencil (in the future there will only be propelling pencils, said my Dad) on pieces of spare paper and explaining to me precisely how he was going to implement the construction and make all the parts fit together. He was very heavy on the details and spent ages perfecting his dovetail joints, which merged together like those of a master craftsman. The only trouble was that a lot of his furniture remained unfinished - unpainted, uncovered, just the - often cheap - bare wood. It didn't bother my Dad. I think he looked at it and simply saw the perfect beauty of the design and the construction (especially the perfect dovetail joints), not how it looked to the consumer (me), who wanted it to look pretty as well. He was a real technician.

So when I started at Siemens Sunbury, I guess that was mainly why I just fitted in with all the technician guys I worked together with. I was way younger than most of them, but I suppose that made it seem more normal for me, like they were kind of Dad figures for me. The technicians' workshop was in the room right next to my office, and I had to go through it to visit the bathroom, as well as to get to the stores where all my technical parts were located, plus the big Siemens Sunbury stores, which was like walking through a portal into a huge new magical universe when you opened the door behind the bathroom. Opening the door into the Siemens Sunbury stores from our offices was a bit like walking into Narnia from the back of the magic wardrobe.

A Full-Time Job

This is the fourth episode in the series "Mystery of the Missing Research".

Previous episode: Siegfried and the Professor

After a couple of weeks, I realized that the part-time job was not going to cover my costs. This is partly due to the high taxes in Germany, but mostly due to the fact that under German law, I still have to pay private health insurance. It’s so complicated. One of the main reasons I took a job as an employee was so that the employer would contribute to my massive private health insurance costs. In fact, the university’s HR Department promised me on the phone that they would take over almost half of these costs, as is customary. After two weeks, it turned out that the guy who assured me of that had got the facts totally wrong! Instead of paying what was discussed, it turns out that they will only pay about one-eighth. The net pay is so low that it makes a big difference. Plus, there are higher travel costs than I expected and more tax. Quite literally, it is not worth me doing this job at all!! I am left with so little net that I could be earning more by staying at home and doing a couple of small translation projects every month.

There is no other solution at the moment but to take on a full-time job in order to survive. However, I am not convinced that, even with a full-time job as a secretary here, I will be earning enough to be living a half-way comfortable life. I simply hadn’t foreseen this situation and to be honest, the HR Department has screwed up a lot.

Siegfried and the Professor

This is the third episode in the series "Mystery of the Missing Research".

Previous episode: Not Moving Forward

Nobody explained much to me about anything when I first got here. For a little while, I thought Kurt was the Head of our entire Institute, which has around a hundred people, most of them men. On the second day, Kurt introduced me to a guy who I assumed just happened to be standing around in the secretariat, with something along the lines of, “This is the big man who knows everything”. It was a bit puzzling as the “big man” was only a little taller than me (I am not tall!) and himself did not expand on the everything it was about which he was so knowledgeable. He showed very little interest in me but did join us for lunch, where by chance I sat next to him. I was very polite and tried to engage him in conversation, with very little success. He did mention that he used to live in Paris and had done his PhD there, whereupon I told him I had also studied for one semester in Paris, but he showed literally no interest and did not respond. Looking back, I guess he was wondering what kind of a secretary studies in Paris!

A couple of weeks later we had a meeting with the entire Institute and this guy was moderating it. Afterwards I googled his name, Hagen Eichner, and found out that he was actually the Head. Of the whole Institute. Bingo, there was a photo of him in a gown and everything. Boy did I feel embarrassed that I didn’t know he was actually the boss! According to the bio he is going to be 48 soon. He is smartly dressed and very clean-cut, but apart from that I have ascertained nothing about him at all. It didn’t help that he wasn’t interested in me at lunch. I kind of closed down after that.

Not Moving Forward

This is the second episode in the series "Mystery of the Missing Research".

Previous episode: A New Job

In life, I have learned, if you are part of a large company, or in my case, a large German public sector institution (several thousand people work at this campus), your entire existence there is determined by your immediate superior. If something goes wrong, you really only have that guy that you can talk to about it. You would not want to go over their head and complain, nor would you want to become embroiled in discussions about your boss with other employees, as it will always get back to them eventually. So your immediate boss very much determines your life, career and circumstances, and ultimately happiness, within the organization.

While I like Kurt a lot and feel very much supported by him, it is still puzzling me why he has virtually no work for me and I am beginning to wonder if anyone else knows that I actually have nothing to do – apart from the occasional proofread, as I mentioned before. I know that I’m only supposed to be a secretary here (which of course I’m totally over-qualified for, having spent most of my life working in informatics) but I think even a real secretary would have limits in this situation. I have literally reached the stage where I am embarrassed, ashamed, and yes – even scared – to mention this state of affairs to a single person, either inside or outside the entire Institute. It just doesn’t seem right. I keep asking myself if I should be working on something that I’m not aware of, or if I haven’t explored things enough. Kurt has explained very little to me – he’s shown me the project’s website in English, and I have digested it and made linguistic corrections. And he’s given me access to all his project e-mails for the last few months, to read – but they mostly seem to just contain inconsequential, insubstantial discussions about minor topics between Kurt and the other two project heads in our partner institutions. And without further in-depth explanation, I can’t really make head or tail of them.

When I first met Kurt at the interview, I was a little taken aback by his seemingly awkward manner of talking, his fixed way of staring at me unblinkingly and his slightly jerky and awkward movements and walk. In the meantime, I’ve become more used to it. And because he is kind to me, and because he chose me for the job, I feel fairly confident with him. I am not the world’s most confident person, and despite whatever show I try to put on for people, I am really quite shy. So it took a lot of nerve for me to pluck up the courage after about two weeks and tell him that I had nothing at all to do.

I should explain that I don’t actually meet with Kurt every day. Only maybe once or maximum twice a week, when he comes to my office. I guess he thinks that is obligatory, that he at least sees/talks to his secretary/personal assistant for about 20 minutes a week, just to show he is interested in the fact that she is there at all. Kind of an “alibi” visit. I mean, I see Kurt most lunchtimes, because I have chosen to go to the canteen with the group – we meet every day at precisely 11:37 a.m. outside Kurt’s office – his stipulation – but if I decided to bring lunch with me from home and warm it up in the microwave, or chop up a salad, as some people (the other secretaries) do, I wouldn’t see either the group or Kurt at all on a regular basis. In fact, I would probably see almost nobody at all, the entire morning. I would be like a ghost, flitting in and out and not doing anything!

And what happens in these little meetings? Just about nothing. A lot of hot air is blown around and Kurt makes much of the one or two tiny tasks I have that week. He can waffle on profoundly for ten minutes about a two-line e-mail of no consequence that I have to write. Or he will use pompous words and flamboyant phrases to describe insignificant events that might or might not happen should certain measures might or might not be implemented, all the while nodding to emphasize the seriousness of the situation and staring at me with his unblinking eyes. It is a superpower of academics, I think. To make you believe that the subject matter is of vital importance and that they absolutely own it.

Anyway, Kurt’s reaction to my telling him that I had nothing at all to do was to make a little kind of “Mh” noise in his throat, then turn on his heel and march out of my room without a word, with his awkward stiff walk. He also closed the door, which I always have open, and I called out, “Please leave the door open –” but my words were just gone with the wind. This first time, I was surprised at his rudeness, but then I thought, Maybe he didn’t understand me properly. Maybe it’s my English accent in German. So a few days later when he paid me one of his flying visits, I said the same thing again: “Kurt, I’ve got nothing to do”. I thought he would understand this truly hellish situation, sitting around for four hours a day staring at my screen or out of the window, by myself in this room, isolated in a completely different building from my group, not interacting with anyone. But Kurt just made his little “Mh” noise again and turned around and marched out of the room, with me calling “Please leave the d–” and my words being lost in the ether while he closed the door on me again. It was almost as if he were trying to close me out of his head, or as if he thought if he closed the door with me inside, I wouldn’t exist for a while. And quite honestly, that’s how I feel. As if I don’t exist.

After my third attempt to convey my desperation, I extended my usual complaint with the addendum, “Please, could you give me something to do?”

This time, Kurt stared at me with his unblinking, emotionless eyes and snapped, “Then do something that moves you forward!”, in a cold, almost aggressive manner, and turned on his heel and marched, head down and stiff, out of the room, almost slamming the door behind him and closing me out of his life and possibly his conscience yet again.

I don’t even know what that sentence means! I will not be asking him again.

I have developed a method for coping with this situation. As usual, I continue to get up at 6:30 a.m. I perform all my routines: shower, dressing, breakfast, makeup, nails, etc. I make sure I look as nice as possible every day, even though almost no-one is going to see me. I leave the house a few minutes before 8 a.m. and drive the 35-40 minutes to work. The drive is always stressful – a lot of traffic and congestion at this time of the morning. I usually arrive just after 8:30 a.m. at work, having been up for just over two hours, and in peak functioning mode. I fetch a coffee and then start to wind down all my engines, which in the meantime I can do pretty quickly, because I have been practicing it for weeks. I bring myself to a level where I am completely composed and serene, and where I am expecting nothing, absolutely nothing at all to unruffle or provoke me. Effectively, I am in a state where I am not really capable of any kind of challenging work. I would go so far as to say that I am not really capable of any kind of work at all! I am content and relaxed, and I can sit there for the next four hours and just do nothing, if necessary. Essentially, I am almost in a trance. It is my survival mechanism.

Next episode: Siegfried and the Professor

A New Job

This is the first episode in the series "Mystery of the Missing Research".

So now I am working mornings as a secretary at a technological institute in our city’s university. It’s one of the better universities in Germany. It has two campuses, one in the center of the city and one on a campus north of the city out in the middle of nowhere in the forest. I also applied for a job at the city campus, but was only offered this one in the forest. It is about a 40-minute drive for me and it has taken a while to get used to the stress of the journey. They have put me in an office in a separate building, not the one in which either my boss or my team are located. I sit completely on my own in this room and apart from saying Hello in the mornings, nobody speaks to me. It’s a bit of a mystery to me why I am in solitary confinement over here when my boss and team are over there. Apart from that, I have almost nothing to do! I’m certainly not being a secretary.

Except that after a couple of weeks, they realized I could write. And so, since then, I occasionally get scientific academic papers to correct in English. Most of the people here are German of course and they are writing their papers in English. I think it’s a pretty well-known fact how academics live to publish their papers in academic journals. That’s their whole raison d’être. So they are really happy to have a native speaker like myself to proofread them. I also get a little translation work to do – German to English – which I enjoy. All of this work might keep me busy for about five hours a week on average, and I have to be here for twenty hours. So for about fifteen hours a week I have to pretend to work. That is a feat and a half, seriously. That’s even more difficult than actually working.

Of course, my pay grade doesn’t match the work I’m doing, when I’m actually working. I found out that I’m getting paid a lot less than the three other secretaries here, who don’t appear to have one academic qualification between them, while I have a university degree. But I don’t care. Sitting around all day doing nothing at all is the worst thing. I spend the morning here, then I go home and research or write articles, or do translation work, which still pays relatively well, in comparison. Usually, I work at the weekends too.

My boss, Kurt, is gay. He made this quite clear on Day One. It makes things easier, I think. Kurt is from Dresden, in the old East Germany, and he was born and grew up there when it still had a wall round it. I can’t figure out to what extent, if at all, this has made an impact on his character. His partner lives in Bern, and Kurt joins him at the weekends, so he has gone from one extreme to the other really. Communism to Swissness. I find him very fair and I feel that he likes me. I have told all my friends, Kurt is the best boss I ever had in my life. Except he has no work for me.

My friends keep asking, why did they hire you when they have no work for you? I say, I think maybe I am just an outlet for some money they need to spend. Just an item in the balance sheet. That’s why they parked me over here in solitary confinement and hoped I would just sit here like a tiny quiet mouse. I guess I look like that kind of a person!

I don’t know what will happen when they find out I’m not.

Next episode: Not Moving Forward

The People's Princess

The plane was not new. It was the oldest plane Lizzie had ever seen. The cabin crew were not new either. They were the oldest cabin crew Lizzie had ever seen. They were two women who were the most overweight people Lizzie had actually ever seen in a plane. She wondered how they were going to move up and down the aisles with ease. They were like two mothers, waddling along and calling everybody 'Hon'. One of them called Lizzie 'Hon' and she started to cry. She was frightened of flying, she felt sick and her head was spinning. She wanted somebody to take her in their arms and tell her that everything would be all right. She knew that the doctor had been right, that she should not fly with concussion. Her head would probably explode at take-off.

It did not explode at take-off but Lizzie felt worse. The one flight attendant who had called her 'Hon' came and offered her some nuts but Lizzie could not speak by this time and the woman asked, 'Are you OK, Hon?'

Lizzie said, 'No,' so the flight attendant said, 'You come to the back with me, just come and sit down, you'll be all right,' so Lizzie went and sat at the back, where they were getting all the nuts and drinks out of the cupboards and the attendant made her sit down on the cabin crew's seat and said, 'Now, I think you need a beer, you'll be all right once you've had a beer,' and poured her one, and Lizzie said, 'I am scared of flying.'

'No need, Hon,' said the flight attendant. 'My name's Maddie. I been flyin with this airline since 1959. I'm still goin.'

Reconstructing History

In George Orwell’s 1984, the Ministry of Truth is the propaganda ministry responsible for ensuring that historical events are falsified in order to maintain the status quo. It changes historical archives and rewrites recorded history for propaganda effect. Unless people can actually remember what really happened, there is no choice but for the general public to accept what is on record and in the “history books”.

But even if people do remember the actual events, there is nothing to corroborate and substantiate their claims if the history books have been rewritten. This thus makes it impossible, for example, for future generations to believe such claims. And of course, once people have forgotten the events themselves, or indeed once the people who experienced the events are no longer alive, people then have no choice but to rely on what exists as a record to present the “facts”.

Following the current obsession with all things World War I, I am reading and researching as much as I can get my hands on (and that’s a lot more than I had previously thought). The wealth of material just lying around waiting to be read is unbelievable, considering it all happened 100 years ago. The fact of the matter seems to be that people just wrote more back then and hung on to it. Or perhaps they just had better quality paper, as most of the stuff I have seen is in better condition than some of the things I wrote just 10 or 15 years ago. Letters home from soldiers in the field, newspapers, photos, diaries, the stuff just keeps on coming if you go looking for it.

Mannheim To Frankfurt With Deutsche Bahn

Senk you for trevelling viz Deutsche Bahn. That's what the train "captain" used to announce over the microphone when the train arrived at a station and they said "Auf Wiedersehen!" in three different languages. They don't say that any more. Now they say Senk you for chusing Deutsche Bahn today. I guess they got a new American translator. And I'm always like, duh, did we have a choice?

The ICE train (InterCityExpress, not really cold train) does actually run pretty much on time. 10 years ago, it didn't. 10 years ago about 30% of ICE trains were either cancelled or late. One time, I was late to work in Frankfurt (yes, this is not the first time I've been foolish enough to accept a job in the big smoke) because there was a horse on the track. You heard correctly. The driver got out and held onto the horse until the police came.

This is a train that goes at over 300 kilometers an hour and everybody is relying on it to do that so that they can get to work. When I finally did, my manager did not believe the horse story and who can blame him.

Anyway Deutsche Bahn must have got a new boss or something because now, almost all the trains do actually run on time! I take that back! All of the trains run on time! OK I exaggerate! Very occasionally, there might be a teeny delay of 5 minutes, but the train will almost always have made it up by the time it gets to the next station.

Keep Calm And Vote For Merkel

Interesting posters have recently appeared all over our town, calling for our citizens to vote for Angela Merkel in the upcoming German Federal elections at the end of this September. They appear to be the work of the Junge Union, the youth organization fraction of the CDU and the CSU, the two German conservative parties who, together with the FDP, form the coalition government of Germany, also referred to as the second Merkel cabinet.

The posters (see photo) appear to the unitiated eye to be very low-key and straightforward, with a pleasant blue background and a simple white font. The text is "Cool bleiben und Kanzlerin wählen" which literally means "Stay cool and vote for the Chancelloress" (that's Angela Merkel). In case you were unsure whether it was about Angela Merkel, the text is capped by a little logo of a pair of white hands with the fingertips pressed together, which is Merkel's signature pose. The hand logo appears, as mentioned, above the text, almost like a little crown.

Now I bet you're thinking, that sounds familiar. But most of our townspeople are walking past it without batting an eyelid. In contrast to this cupcake, who upon seeing it for the first time, chortled, pointed, chortled again, said, oh that's clever, and promptly took a photo.

If you ask the average German here what they think of the poster, they'll tell you that the blue background is very pretty, and also neutral - not the usual color of the CDU, whose colors are usually black or orange. They also find the little hand logo amusing. Anything else? I ask. Nope. Do you know where the idea for the poster comes from? Yes, the Junge Union.

What I love about this is that the Germans, long reproached with a lack of humor, have taken something quintessentially British and humorously turned it into their own. We've been seeing various humorous versions of the second World War poster "Keep Calm And Carry On" for quite a while now, but this is the first time I've seen a German version of it. And when I explain its significance to my fellow townspeople, they are surprised, even slightly amused, but I can tell that they don't really get the joke completely.

The irony of course is that the original poster was referring directly to a state induced by events that would be created by Germans. And it was intended to encourage the British public to show the Germans what they were made of. That was what was going to help the British win the war. So the poster really falls into the category of anti-German war propaganda.

I am wondering if the Junge Union's decision to customize this poster in a propaganda parody was a bit "tongue-in-cheek" or whether they just thought it would be a really good idea to use (what they thought was) a well-known slogan. Basically, it's falling a bit flat here, and that's sad. The Junge Union, clearly staffed with a bunch of Bright Young Things, might just have been a bit too clever.

Duties And Lessons

An extract from my diary of 1972, when I was 13. All names have been changed.

I had to read the lesson in church this morning. I have to tell you it was not a success.

I wish I didn’t have to read the lesson. Mum asked Father Clement if I could read every few weeks and Father Clement said yes, but otherwise only a couple of men used to read it, and I am the only young person and also female to be doing it. And I have to read it about every three weeks. It is awful, I hate being up there and in front of the whole church, I feel that they are all thinking that I want to be the centre of attention or something. And I don’t! It’s like getting up on the stage every time, and if I don’t rehearse, my performance is very bad. But I can’t let Mum down. I think she’s so proud of me.

Dad doesn’t come to church, he’s a Protestant, and he actually doesn’t go to church at all, except on Christmas Day, but because we’re Catholics we have to go all the time. I mean, every Sunday and Feast Days. Mum always takes the children and me, although sometimes the children can get away with not going if they’re sick.

At least it’s not in Latin any more.

Anyway, why Mum wants me to read the lesson is a long story. The thing is, when we moved to London, I started to talk with a London accent. That really annoyed Mum. It’s difficult, because everybody I know talks with a London accent, that’s because we’re living in London. But Mum says you won’t get anywhere in life talking like that and you should speak with an “accentless accent”. Although frankly, everybody always thinks Mum talks with an Irish accent and is always asking where she comes from in Ireland. Mum has never been to Ireland in her life, so this is a kind of joke. She says it is because she grew up with Irish nuns.

Stolen Time

This is another excerpt from my unpublished novel The Mummy and Daddy Christmas Present Fund and follows the chapter Fish and Chips in the Park

The week after the meeting with A.J.F. and Peter Grisham, John requested two day's leave. It was only about five weeks until Christmas, but John still had several days leave due to him for the year, and he explained to A.J.F. that he needed to start decorating the house, in preparation for the sale, and that he needed to spend some time with his family.

It still seemed uncertain whether his relocation would take place in the following summer, or several months later. Of course, John could travel to Peterborough on day trips for the initial period, A.J.F. explained. Maybe on one-week trips. Complete relocation, however, would be required by the summer of 1973 at the latest. That was a whole eighteen months away. But eighteen months could pass by very quickly. It had been nine years, this month, since they had moved to England from Calcutta, and they had really only just started to feel that this was their home here. Although deep inside, John knew that he and Aileen would never really be at home here.

Falling In Love At Fatty George’s Saloon

Just before my 21^st birthday in 1980, I went to spend six months in Vienna as part of my university degree course. I had a place at the Wirtschaftsuniversität to study banking for one term, followed by a three-month internship at a small paper-manufacturing company. Two friends from my university course in England were also on placements in Vienna at the time, and we all stayed in rented student accommodation in the southern part of the city. I was particularly lucky as I got to share a large room with an English student from another university called Hannah, who played the guitar and sang, and who was full of exciting, spontaneous ideas.

All the others were already on their internships so I spent the first few days journeying by myself to and from the university, which was at the other side of Vienna from where we lived. I did that until one of the most prominent and popular professors, who also taught one of my classes, made a pass at me. He had invited me and a few other students in my class to dinner at his apartment, and while the others were carrying the dishes into the kitchen afterwards, he grabbed hold of me, put his hand up my sweater and in one swift movement removed my bra and grabbed a breast. I stopped going to the university after that.

We celebrated my 21^st birthday in the Heurigen, the local wine restaurants which are plentiful in Vienna, and particularly in the southern district where we lived. It was there and then on that night that Hannah decided I needed a boyfriend, and she knew just the chap – her boss. Hannah worked at the most prestigious bank in Vienna, the Zentralsparkasse, which in 1980 was The Bank To Bank With. The Viennese have a strict social and professional hierarchy, in which those with both social and professional titles are attributed due respect. Where you work and live play an important part in this system, as does being seen at the right places with the right people. And Hannah’s boss was placed quite highly in a lot of these categories.

There Will Be Sad Memories

There will be sad memories
To replace these sad memories
They will be new and fresh
They will burn brighter and
Singe those others like charred paper or
Turn them into shadows flickering behind a candle
And the old sad memories
Will be almost forgotten till
A word or smell or color or place reminds me
And the pain will be sudden and very sharp
And I will cry instantly and
Spontaneously but very briefly.


There will be sad days
To replace these sad days
I will be older and less adaptable
I will remember times
When I was younger and
Life was easier and all before me
And the old sad days
Will be almost forgotten till
A voice or touch or sound or view reminds me
And the pain will be fast and deep
And I will cry instantly for what was lost
Spontaneously but very briefly.

Before

Another excerpt from my unpublished novel "The Mummy and Daddy Christmas Present Fund"

Tuesday 9^th November 1971

John came into the office to find a note from Lynda on his desk: “Mr Parfitt would like to see when you come in.”

So A.J.F. was already up and prowling. John removed his coat and hung it up on the coat-stand. Well A.J.F. wasn’t going to make him jump through a hoop like a tiger at the circus. It was raining and the tube up to Mayfair had been packed. And the train up to Cannon Street had been packed as well. John sat down at his desk, and checked his calendar. There was just one phone call he had to make, and it would be sufficient if he called this afternoon. And Lynda had also left the usual file containing the typed-up letters awaiting his signature. Normally, this would be a casual day. He hoped A.J.F. would have coffee served, if it were to be a serious meeting. But probably it wouldn’t.

He waited exactly 10 minutes and then called A.J.F.’s extension.

“Parfitt,” A.J.F.’s clipped voice answered.

“Oh good morning, A.J.F., it’s John Osborne here. You left a message for me?”

“John. Could you come up to my office straight away? There’s someone I’d like you to meet.”

Oh. Someone he’d like him to meet. Really. Who might that be then.

John took the stairs to the 4^th floor. He made the formal knock on A.J.F.’s door and entered almost immediately, only just overlapping A.J.F.’s confirmation of “Come.”

I’m An Alien, Get Me Out Of Here

During my last year at primary (elementary) school in England in the 1960s, we had a girl in our class who, for the purposes of data protection, I shall call Martha Ann Dickens. Martha managed to inform all of us several times each day that her initials spelled out MAD, and that she was indeed mad. That was her claim to fame apparently.

Having, myself, a mother who managed to inform me at least once a day that all four of my grandparents were “off their heads”, I lived in constant fear of the crazy gene spontaneously and uncontrollably leaping out and manifesting itself in myself, thus alerting all around me to my own inherent madness. So Martha’s pride in her craziness astounded me – she was not trying to hide but to advertise it, and if you didn’t get it straight off after a couple of minutes, she would jump out and bang you on the nose with it.

Martha was, according to her own statement, an alien. I don’t mean that in the resident without a British passport sense, but in the like she was from another planet sense. She would attach herself to her person of choice for that day and spend the rest of the day following them about spouting on about herself. Usually it was me. With Martha there was not much in the way of conversation, it was more of a long monologue for whom she required a listener. She talked as much as possible in school, during breaks, in the lunch hour and on the walk home – unfortunately we lived only two streets away from each other.

Fish And Chips In The Park

Another excerpt from my unpublished novel "The Mummy and Daddy Christmas Present Fund"

John had almost finished making breakfast by the time Aileen came into the kitchen. She closed the sliding door behind her, the one he had made and fitted last year after he had had all his ideas about saving space in the kitchen – installing a sliding door, making a table by fixing a large piece of wood to the wall by brackets and dispensing with table legs. She sat down at the bracket table and looked away as he placed a cup of tea in front of her.

"There's toast," John said.

“I don’t want toast.”

“Well, there’s… eggs.”

“I don’t want any damn eggs.”

He sighed. He helped himself to a fried egg and some toast and sat down with a cup of tea.

“Why do you have to humour her like that, Lizzie’s just a bloody spoiled child! Needs a damn clip over the ear!”

Christmas

For my beautiful Beanchen at Christmas. Have a wonderful day.

Bina Writes an Essay

This is another chapter from my unpublished novel "The Mummy and Daddy Christmas Present Fund".
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Saturday 19^th June 2004

Bina comes into my bedroom without knocking and stands at the foot of the bed.

“Mama.”

It can only be about money or similar. My clock says 10:31. It is Saturday morning.

“Yes.”

“You said you would put the Internet on the other computer. For me to work.”

So I did. Last night. I forgot.

“OK.”

She leaves. I drag myself out of bed. This is a good reason to get up. It is one of Life’s Important Reasons. My daughter needs to write an essay for school, she has to research in the Internet. It is a reason to live.

My pyjamas smell of sweat, I hate it because I never sweat. But six weeks ago I had a hormone coil inserted, something to stop the awful bleeding. The doctor suggested this alternative method to having a hysterectomy. And since then I sweat every night, towels full, and everything is drenched and I hate it. I hate waking up in the morning and smelling it. I wish all of this, all this sadness and all this pain would go away. It is a reason not to get up in the morning.

In light of the Jimmy Savile scandals, I remembered that back in the 1970s, when I was a teenager and Jimmy Savile was apparently doing his thing, young girls falling for and having affairs with older men really wasn't considered anything unusual or even frowned upon. In fact, at least in the circles I moved, it was the ambition of many young girls to find themselves what we used to call a "Sugar Daddy".

Of course, this can't be compared with Jimmy's activities, and I was never a fan of the chap anyway. But back then, it was simply a different time and people looked at many things of this nature in a different way.

This is a story I wrote as a chapter in my unpublished novel "The Mummy and Daddy Christmas Fund", which tells a little bit of a story of one girl and her Sugar Daddy.

Flambeaux 

Sunday May 2nd, 1976 

We’re pretty sure that Simon Lyons is Yu Lin’s Sugar Daddy. Ashley and I plan to acquire at least one Sugar Daddy. We’re just not quite too sure how to go about it.

Ashley, Tessa and I are so sure about this because Simon Lyons picks her up in a dark blue Ferrari every day after school, and sometimes in the lunch hour. That’s a Ferrari! And she also told me that sometimes she visits him before she comes to school. So sometimes she comes in late to Assembly. Simon Lyons is a diamond dealer who lives in the town and also owns a restaurant, which is called the Flambeaux. He is a friend of the family, she says. But the thing is, he is obviously very rich and very keen on Yu Lin and she is of course very beautiful. Apart from that, he is 35 and Yu Lin is only 17! And she has been seeing him since she was 16. So why would he be spending so much time on her if he were just a friend of the family!

Anyway, Ashley and Tessa and I asked her about it but Yu Lin just continues to maintain that he is a family friend.

One day, a while ago, I had a row with Ashley. It was really stupid, and it only lasted one day. Ashley and I have been friends for years, and we had never ever had a row before. But we just got cross with each other about one small thing, and then I went into the cloakroom at lunchtime and hid in amongst the coats, and just cried to myself. And then Yu Lin came in to the cloakroom, because she was getting dressed to go out. And she found me hiding on a bench between a few coats.

“Oh, Lizzie, what are you doing here?” Yu Lin asked.

I just mumbled something about being miserable because I’d had a row with Ashley.

Yu Lin put on her hat and coat. “Do you want to come to lunch with me?” she said. “I’m going down to see Simon Lyons.”